Elizabeth Wright Enright Gillham (September 17, 1907 – June 8, 1968) was an American writer of children's books, an illustrator, writer of short stories for adults, literary critic and teacher of creative writing. Perhaps best known as the Newbery Medal-winning author of Thimble Summer (1938) and the Newbery runner-up Gone-Away Lake (1957), she also wrote the popular Melendy quartet (1941 to 1951). A Newbery Medal laureate and a multiple winner of the O. Henry Award, her short stories and articles for adults appeared in many popular magazines and have been reprinted in anthologies and textbooks. In 2012 Gone-Away Lake was ranked number 42 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. The first two Melendy books also made the Top 100, The Saturdays (novel) and The Four-Story Mistake. Biography Enright was born September 17, 1907, in Oak Park, Illinois. Her father, Walter J. Enright, was a political cartoonist. Her mother, Maginel Wright Enright, (the younger sister of famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright), was also a book and magazine illustrator, a shoe designer for Capezio, and author of the memoir, The Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. The Enrights divorced when Elizabeth was eleven, and after that she attended boarding school in Connecticut. Her mother remarried, becoming Maginel Wright Barney. Originally, Enright intended to be a dancer, and for a time she studied under the famous Martha Graham. Her summers were spent on Nantucket Island, off the coast of New England, a location she later used in some of her books. Preparing for a career as an illustrator, Enright studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1927–1928, and at the Parsons School of Design, Paris. Enright also reviewed children's literature for The New York Times, taught creative writing at Barnard College, a women's college affiliated with the then all-male Columbia University in New York City's Morningside Heights neighborhood on the Upper Westside (1960–1962), and led writing seminars at colleges across the U.S.A. Enright married Robert Gillham, an advertising executive with the J. Walter Thompson agency, April 24, 1930. They had three sons: Nicholas, Robert and Oliver (1948–2008). She died aged 60 in her home at her home in Wainscott, Long Island, New York State on June 8, 1968. Her obituary in The New York Times states that she "died in her sleep at her home... after a short